Dance Heals

I really need to find a way to consolidate these posts, but the effects of dance on the body and brain continue to astound me. It has healing and preventative links to some of the most degenerative diseases out there. And now, it seems to help prevent dementia!

This article here by Richard Powers sums it up nicely. I will quote it directly and let you decide:

"One of the surprises of the study was that almost none of the physical activities appeared to offer any protection against dementia.  There can be cardiovascular benefits of course, but the focus of this study was the mind.  There was one important exception:  the only physical activity to offer protection against dementia was frequent dancing. 

            Reading - 35% reduced risk of dementia

            Bicycling and swimming - 0%

            Doing crossword puzzles at least four days a week - 47%

            Playing golf - 0%

            Dancing frequently - 76%. "

Mind. Blown. Now get to that dance class!

The meditative quality of dance and music...and bubble wrap

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/12/06/166685434/what-to-do-when-the-bus-doesn-t-come-and-you-want-to-scream-an-experiment?utm_source=NPR&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20121207

The post above describes the frustration of waiting - and how to keep ourselves occupied, thus reducing said frustration - with something as simple as popping a bubble.

Tablet and phone applications work in this exact manner. What is so fascinating about slicing fruit that it can hold us for a 45 minute subway ride?

The answer: absolutely nothing. We just prefer having something to do than not.

Which brings me back to dance, music and meditation. Shouldn't we be able to manage a 5 minute wait  for a bus without wanting to scream? I find that I can happily sit on an hour long bus ride, daydreaming or thinking about the actions of my day or my plans for the future. And I am quite sure that my dance training is why I am able to do this (coupled along with a highly active Roald Dahl-esque imagination, except my flying peaches are filled with taans and alaps and have clouds that can be used as dance floors).

The power of focus for the practitioner is truly where the power of art lies. Both from the standpoint of the viewer: can the art take you to a place where you don't feel like you are waiting for the end of the performance? Where it centers your focus, draws you in, and holds you in a meditative state of mind? And from the standpoint of the artist: can you focus during your practice on the one step that needs to be repeated over and over for 30 minutes. Can you focus during the song itself so deeply that you are truly present in the moment?

I suppose you can argue that bubble wrap is a focus, a simple, repetitive motion that allows you to be both the artist and the viewer. However, I think we can agree that most of us feel like we've gotten a hell of a lot more out of the meditative quality of an intense show than from chucking angry birds at some poorly piled up wood.

Nrityagram: A globalized dance form

If it is not clear yet, I consider myself to be a dancer, with a forte in bharatanatyam. It is how I communicate; it is how I live; it is how I breathe. I am in many senses nothing without it.

And as an Indian classical dancer, where mentors/gurus are your source to continual improvement, and myself with no official teacher training me at the moment, it has been difficult. For six years I have floundered looking for someone  - sometimes, anyone - who would want to take on a dancer who wanted intensive training. Sadly, I came up short. Until I took Nrityagram’s month long summer workshop.

It is an incredible experience to find a teacher at this age who is actually interested in developing professional level students whether they are trained or untrained in the style. Most teachers in the Indian classical dance field will write you off if you haven’t been with them for years and years, and several more will show favoritism to the talented. Not so at Nrityagram, where the philosophy emphasizes dedication and passion leading a student towards carefully guided professional development.

Best of all is that the dance company remains firmly routed in the traditions of Indian classical dance, while creating constant evolution within the form.  The result is an ever-developing globalized art form. Though Nrityagram once had, and perhaps will again, house other styles of dance, as of right now many of us associate them with a deep commitment to the odissi form and ethos.  But the style here does not quite emphasize preservation or even simply working with only the vocabulary that has been passed down to them…it is one that has absorbed the techniques, stability, and graces of many other genres of dance while adapting it to the art form. Never before have I seen so many influences from dance around the world yet found it to remain firmly entrenched within the curvaceous feel of odissi. And to me, this is what makes Nrityagram so inspiring. They keep pushing the form forward.

At Nrityagram’s village, which is like a mini-college complete with dorms and several areas to practice, is a quiet air of constant learning, absorbing, and imbibing, even amongst the teachers. It is a place that makes almost everyone who comes want to quit everything and stay here, even with the lizards that hide behind your mirror and after you’ve killed your twentieth cockroach in the bathroom. And this is not because the style of dance, or the incredibly beautiful dancers, (though these are a product of the atmosphere) but because of the inspiration and knowledge that the teachers impart. After learning at Nrityagram, it’s difficult to imagine learning from anyone else or any other way.  It’s an experience you hope you can consistently come back to, magnificent in its simplicity, humbling, and utterly enthralling.

I wish, in some senses, I had found Nrityagram 5 years ago, when I had first embarked on my permanent journey into the dance field. I would have happily tried out for their residential program then, and with a little luck may now consider odissi to be my forte rather than bharatanatyam.

In other senses, it was the perfect timing for me. It is a time when I feel I can truly appreciate and apply the perspective and criticisms of accomplished artists such as Bijayini Satpathy/Surupa Sen/Pavithra Reddy, without tons of ego (at least in relation to 5 years back), and with some of the carefully developed awareness of the body that I didn’t have when I was 21 – and took being a little lost as a dancer – to find.

And just like learning, there is no conclusion here, only hope that I can continue onwards and upwards.

The Obsession with Sita and Sight, Part 3: The Backlash and Traditional Values

If you're new to this blog, this is the first of a 4 part series of posts trying to explain why there has been a great deal of performances in the Indian arts community from the female perspective starting from around the 80's.

In the last post, we alluded to the idea that some of it may have been the second wave of feminism.  However, the global trend of feminism does not explain why so many of these re-tellings concentrate on Indian epics, especially pinpointing Sita in the Ramayana...

This is something that I believe to be a combination of “the backlash effect” and “traditional values”.

The “backlash effect” is a constant in the world of trend analysis.  In every subject, whether it be music, dance, academics, math, or even socially, there is something I shall dub “the backlash effect” – the destruction lurking at the edge of every trend, the implication that its impending doom will result in the opposing idea becoming the new trend. As trends become more popular, the “backlash effect” comes in the form of opposition that becomes stronger and larger until the trend reaches an extreme and the opposition group reacts so vehemently that the trend crumbles and the opposition group becomes the new rising trend. Some come sooner than others (which can be as simple and small as the backlash in fashion over a year or two: in the 1990s high waisted jeans were the fashion and now it is super low waisted jeans) to something much more long and enduring such as the use of women’s bodies to tout Indian morals.

Gasp, what did I just say?

Women have been the subjects of much oppression in India; the rising feminist trend finally allowing for the backlash it was due for. Their subsequent rise in their oppression came during the fight for independence, where the trend became to fight the war over control for women’s’ bodies. People heading the conservative movement, also called the “traditionalist movement” -- opposing the British, and fighting for independence -- actually, in many cases, led the oppression of women.

Eg: The British tried to instate laws banning child marriages, and often spoke of the barbarianism of Indians for allowing things such as sati to happen.(7) Indians reacted by referring to their ancient texts such as the Vedas and the Manu Smriti to find proof that these acts were in fact Indian and banning them was an insult to Indian tradition. Many of these laws were fought over how women were to be dealt with: child marriages were young females to old men; sati was the act of a widowed women throwing herself on a funeral pyre under the pretense of unconditional love for the husband; dowry deaths were along the same line of thinking. And Indians were finding proof in ancient texts proving the essence of such acts to Indian culture. The government would even look to women within ancient Indian texts to use as role models for the country. The most significant figure of the women’s cultural and Indian nationalism movement during the fight for independence was the government’s use of Sita in the Ramayana. Lauded as the perfect wife and female, women were told to act and be like her.

Which leads back to the original question.  Why do so many of these reinterpretations deal with the Ramayana?. The reason for this is more than its popularity and lies in an inherent backlash against Sita. Sita, who threw herself into a fire when her husband questioned her purity. Sita, whose image could have been pointed to when a connection was needed to sati. Sita, whose image was pointed to when a woman decided to speak up in order to silence her. Sita, for all she was supposed to be an ideal of women, was in fact an oppressor during the independence movement. How can females of this age not blame her for so much of what happened to them during the independence movement?

Yet, when the backlash effect occurred, it didn’t happen as simply a rejection of Sita. It was a transformation of Sita outright. Just as African Americans in the U.S. changed the word “nigger” from a racial slur to a brotherly term (albeit amongst themselves) women turned Sita from a figure that signified oppression, victimization, and timidity to one that signified power and strength. Yet Sita’s transformation was for different reasons. An outright denunciation of Sita was akin to a denunciation of India and Indian values. The seeds of nationalism had been planted just a few years back and their resultant blooms had not ceased to flourish. Just because there was oppression doesn’t mean women resented the feelings of cultural pride being instilled in them. Nationalism is a pervading power all its own and the oppression of the British was far worse in their minds. So while many disliked Sita, rather than rejecting her outright, they tried to find a way to rationalize her.

This is also reflected in the duality of using Indian Classical Dance as a basis for these reinterpretations. It was, at this point, now considered a high art, the pride and joy of Indian traditions. So using "traditional" classical Indian dance was both a means of keeping the culture in tact while also using the art form to extol very non-traditional ideas. This methodology not only gave their arguments more acceptance, but also an argument technique: dancers were able to utilize the same lyrics, the same books, and the same music the conservative/independence movement used and find a completely opposing meaning to it.

Why was this argument methodology used?  Why not just create new characters, or use other mythological stories?  Again, the nationalism and pride people have in their own culture is not to be overlooked.  The beauty and importance of these books in Indian culture is something I - and many others - have fierce pride in.  By using the other side’s evidence in support of our own ideas we are able to both negate what we didn't like about their interpretation of the mythological Indian women and even praise them at the same time while exalting Indian literature, culture and art.

Very clever indeed.

(7) Maju, Daruwal. "Central Sati Act - an Analysis." PUCL. July 1988. Apr. 2008 .

The Obsession with Sita and Sight, Part 2: Global Trends and Feminism

So, a continuation from the last post: why, since the 1980's, has there been such an explosion of art and literature telling the great epics - in particular, Sita's story - from a feminist point of view?

We explore here the idea that it is due to simply the global trends of the time: the spread of the feminist point of view. All over the world, the idea of the strong female has slowly been coming to the forefront, the trend bubbling over to bursting point since the late 1960s/early1970s with the advent of women’s studies within academic institutions.(3)

It has hit the performance arts particularly hard, with several innovative and influential ideas, foremost amongst them the1975 publication of Laura Mulvey’s article on “the male gaze”,(4) completely catching the world by storm. This, coupled with reinterpretations of Greek mythology by Martha Graham from the female point of view became a platform for others to pursue the same ideas in other works.  I feel like the trend has even hit the mainstream, hitting extremes with hyper-feminist artists such as the Pussycat Dolls and shows like “Sex in the City” catching everyone’s attention, portraying their strength as females in the command over their sexuality and dismissal of men. India, with its close ties to the Western world, was, and still is greatly influenced by this rising trend and more specifically by Martha Graham, affecting artists such as Mrinalini Sarabhai and Chandralekha by self admission.(5) And, of course, with much of the second wave of feminism addressing inequalities and sexist stereotypes in performing arts, Indian Classical Dance was one of the first types of forms to take heed. Oddly enough, the trend left Bollywood untouched, its portrayal of females in films continuing to be from an entirely male perspective.

But perhaps this was because Indian classical dance is no longer in the hands of men. The great gurus during the Indian Renaissance, men as they were, passed their knowledge along to women. The global feminist movement that has been taking place since the 70s found their outlet through the now female dominated classical dances of India, with the newly-empowered Sita at the forefront.(6)

The fact that the female dominated dances are the only performing arts form that have taken steps in portraying the feminist point of view is a direct result of being one of the only female dominated profession in India. This trend has not been identified in the Kathakali or Sattriya forms of dance, which are exclusively male classical dances, simply proving the point further. Bollywood also continues to be dominated by men, with its most famous choreographers, directors, and composers all being male. As such, the trend has been lost upon the field, the female body continuing to reflect the male gaze.

And so we gain a little insight into the beginnings of the obsession with sight...but what of the obsession with Sita?

(3) "Feminism." Wikipedia. 15 Apr. 2008 .

(4) Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Screen 16.3 (1975): 6-18.
(5) As mentioned by Prof. Uttara Coorlawala, PhD
(6) From here on in, references to the Indian classical dance forms will be specifically in reference to female dominated forms.

The Obsession with Sita and Sight, Part 1

I’ve always had a great interest in women and feminism in dance and Indian mythology.  But a few years back, two things happened.

1) I took a course called South Asia: Continuity and Change taught by Professor Uttara Coorlawala and read several articles about the "male gaze".
2) I suddenly took note of the a ridiculous amount of performances/artwork obsessed with retelling stories, particularly from a female perspective.*

*(Her Story by Srinidhi Raghavan and Sahasra Sambamoorthi; Stree by Mythili Prakash; Sita Kavya by Krithika Rajagopalan; Shakthi, The Power of Women by Mallika Sarabhai; Sthree by Ragamala Dance Theater; The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni; Sita's Daughters by Mallika Sarabhai; Sita's Story (unverified title) by Chandralekha; Sita Sings the Blues by Nina Paley; Sitayana by Srinivasa Iyengar to name some of the more popular few that I knew of)

What was this artistic obsession with giving women a voice through art? Where was it coming from? The final straw occurred when I saw Sita Sings the Blues at the Tribeca Film Festival.  The topic was everywhere I turned, essentially inescapable. And so I became intrigued.

It is a vast amount of subject material I have undertaken and a difficult topic to explain completely, and years of research can only really do justice to it. However, I have attempted to offer an analysis based on the evidence I have found (much of it observational) in the hopes that it might spark later discussions.

As I have pointed out, there is a clear and rising trend of the feminist point of view being touted and extolled by the dance world.  This has been particularly true of the Indian community, retelling its ancient lore through the mediums of art and writing, from simple ideas such as removing it from poetry form and into prose to more complex ideas such as telling them from a different perspective.

This global trend has concentrated on much of the same subject matter over the past 20 years, growing in size every year. The greater bulk of them are of the performing arts variety, concentrating on retelling it from a female point of view and furthermore retelling the Ramayana from Sita’s perspective. It all leads to one question:

Why?

Though there are a vast multitude of reasons and probably hundreds of influences; many of them boil down to or are derivatives of four simple ideas. These four reasons I have named as “The Feminist Trend”; “The Backlash Effect”; “The Indian Interpretation”; and “Traditional Values”; are also all connected themselves, intertwined in a way that makes them difficult to separate and explain...

Hopefully you're intrigued enough to check back over the next few weeks as I've attempted to clarify it over a few separate posts...enjoy my fumbling attempts :)

Sitayana: Epic of the earth-born = Sitayanam

Yet Another Clip Showing The Power of Dance

Whether it was the medicine that cured her or if there was significant physical help from the dance itself is always a point to ponder but what you cannot question is that it was the focus and positivity she brought to herself through dance that gave her emotional stability:

A beautiful, inspiring story that was brought to my eyes by a member of the NYC Dance Community

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

"The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground... The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.

Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.

What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?"

~Milan Kundera


Doesn't performance do both? The emotions one goes through while performing are most certainly burdens - you are taking the deepest depths of your being, of perhaps your impression of other people's beings and try to communicate them by dredging them up again through movement, song, whatever it might be.  But the act of performance itself, if you talk to any performer...allows us to feel extreme lightness/elevation/deep spirituality only by depicting and emoting and feeling these burdens.  Odd, isn't it?

Uttara Coorlawala's "It matters for whom you dance"

The first NYC dance community meeting in 2010 brought a lot of interesting questions, stories, and thoughts.  One in particular stood out in my head: Professor Coorlawala's answer to Sridhar Shanmugan upon being asked this question:


Sridharji asked Professor, "Uttara, there was this one moment in this dance you did where you'd throw three flowers and they'd land in a straight line. No matter where you performed it, for what audience, or what knowledge base, in that moment the audience would be brought to tears.  How did you do that, or what was it that brought that about?" (I admit, this quote is not exact, but carries the gist of what he asked):


And Uttara looked steadily around at each one of us, smiling and said, "Do you want to know what my secret is?" The intensity of her question brought a round of enthusiastic encouragement. Quietly, slowly, deliberately, and with her calm manner she continued gazing at all of us and said, "It was because every time, in that moment, I would be dancing for my guru.  It was always for him."


The clarity with which she spoke, the raw passion within her voice - the room was silenced and everyone stared at her, a few with tears dotted within their eyes.  I could only imagine what power the performance itself actually had if verbally she could capture us so.


I assume that this was what spawned her to write “It Matters For Whom You Dance: Reception in Rasa Theory” on the aspect of audience participation in Abhinavagupta's rasa theory.  I've included an excerpt below that I find outlines or abstracts the article, and this idea, particularly well: (The republication of this article is in Dance Matters, Performing India Edited by Pallabi Chakravorty and Nilanjana Gupta, Routledge 2010 pp117-139.)

"...Performing the same solo concert in major Indian cities and for not-so-metropolitan audiences taught me that performance is an ongoing dialogue between performer and audience.

Audience members indicated their preferences by the way that they attended to the event, drawing closer, becoming restive, still, or discussing the dance even as it was occurring. Some audiences gave love and support, others drained energy into a consuming black hole. Some bore witness to an inner journey adding their intensity and experience into the mix of my body memories. Others withdrew in resistance.


Finally, in the early eighties, I had the great joy of performing on three separate occasions for the rasikā (ideal spectator) of my innermost desires,  my spiritual guru Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa or “Baba.” As I continued to travel and perform internationally, I realized that my ideal spectator had transformed my awareness of performance; that each performance subtly and profoundly clarified and intensified my awareness of audiences and of dancing. In seeking to understand more on this mysterious and wonderful dialogue between performer-audience, I found it exemplified in live performances, in stories about performers and most profoundly in the theoretical expositions of bhāva and in the ways that dances can be deliberately structured so as to ensure that viewers remain active and alert...


The Ideal Spectator or Rasikā:
In Indian dance, the performer-audience relationship has historically been considered crucial in determining the quality of performances. If a performance is to be deemed successful, there must be rasa. But it is not the performer's responsibility to evoke rasa. The performer's role is to represent the prescribed emotional moods or bhāva with sustained clear focus. Sattva, or the luminous communicative energy (presence serves as a partial synonym) that results from the performer’s bodily activities and mental focus becomes flavoured, as it were, with the 3 appropriate emotions - bhāva. The sympathetic (sa-hridaya) but critically discerning viewer (rasikā) apprehends this emotion not as a cathartic experience, but as rasa (NātyaŚastra, Chapter 27, verses 49-58 hereafter written as NS 27, 49-58). “Rasa” literally translates as that which is tasted, relished. Rasa is a reflective experience of tasting, rather than of devouring or being devoured by emotions. Rasa involves seeing with an inner eye, hearing resonances, and touching inner spaces. Until the poem is read, it has no existence. Unless the spatial aesthetic and symbolic characteristics of a sculpture are apprehended, it is no more than inert stone. An image of a deity in the temple, a moorti, remains just another icon, until the worshipper is transformed in its presence. Without at least one viewer to taste, (even when that viewer is The Unseen Witness) there cannot be a performance.


This leisurely inner savoring of a performance or a work of art is not only a mental practice assiduously cultivated by those educated in traditional Indian arts and literary forms. The intensity of this experience of rasa is the measure by which success is evaluated. Rasa may involve a spontaneous experience of insight (pratyaksha). Very often, a performer in Indian dance will attribute a spontaneous flash of creative improvisation to the presence of rasikā(s). Accomplished and master performers build audience dialogue into their presentations:


After performing a few items Birju Maharaj said he was very uncomfortable and requested that the overhead nontheatrical lighting be turned on, so that he could see the faces of the audience. He spoke in English (which he rarely speaks) for his invited guests who were unfamiliar with Kathak. Once the lights were turned on, he appeared to be more at ease, structuring his presentation according to the responses of the audience and playing off their moods. At the end of the performance, when he was being showered with applause he said in wonder, that it was the heart of the audience that had inspired him, that he had found himself performing with insights and subtleties that surprised him; he did not know from where they came, but that it had to do with ‘the heart of the audience.’ He said that the rasa of this performance would surely remain with him for a week. And the reverse unfortunately holds true too. At one of Balasaraswati's appearances at the Jacob's Pillow theatre, she is said to have cut short her performance. When asked about this she is said to have felt that the audience had been insensitive to her art. However, she declared that she would not be averse to performing for the students and faculty on that same evening after the paying public went home. Apparently she did just that and held them enthralled. So goes this story told by Ted Shawn in one of his ‘curtain speeches’ to educate American dancegoers to performer-audience conventions of other cultures."

Dance and Rehabilitation

An NY Times article on dance and cerebral palsy.

Recent research has many scientists wondering how dance can help muscle de-generative diseases such as Parkinson's and cerebral palsy. It turns out that dance can be more than a beautiful vision or aesthetic experience - it can heal, and not just emotionally.

It makes me wonder what specifically about dance helps them - is it the mind body awareness? Because then yoga would be just as effective. Is it just modern dance or Indian dance as well? Because then it is specifically movement related. I actually think it's got something to do with the awareness you cultivate within your limbs and then how that awareness becomes part of you - something you just stop thinking about. Kind of like learning a language, but with your body. I wouldn't be surprised if it's modern dance limited, because training or work through modern dance is all about oppositional forces and being extremely aware of how each muscle is situated. A normal modern dance class will include phrases such as "go up to come down" or "keep your upper arm muscle rotated in while keeping the palm facing right". But I'm not positive on this point, and would love to find out how specific it is, because I heard a friend of a friend doing similar research but with salsa dancing!

I suppose also there's the motivational energy that music brings to consider, but I think this is of little effect: both pieces are teaching modern/postmodern/contemporary dance. Music for such pieces is usually quite esoteric.

I would love for scientists to dig deeper into this question.

Books about this phenomena:

Performing Arts Medicine, An Issue of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

Supervision of Dance Movement Psychotherapy: A Practitioner's Handbook